


The People's Champion: A Meta on Shiro's Missing Year

by violethowler



Series: VLD Meta Analysis [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Essays, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Season/Series 08 Spoilers, and being Haggar's lab rat, and his PTSD, references to Shiro's time in the arena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 15:45:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18252917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violethowler/pseuds/violethowler
Summary: Fandom tends to assume that the moniker of Champion is a major, dramatic thing for Shiro. A harsh reminder of everything he endured at the hands of Haggar and the empire... but canon tells a different story.





	The People's Champion: A Meta on Shiro's Missing Year

**Author's Note:**

> Let me be clear upfront by saying that I do not have PTSD, nor am I attempting to speak for anyone who has PTSD and identifies with Shiro. I am not trying to say what people should or should not think about the way his PTSD is portrayed on the show. I am simply pointing out a specific detail that fans assume is a greater source of angst and drama than canon tells us it actually is.

I keep seeing this perception of Shiro in the Voltorn fandom that treats the nickname of “Champion” like it’s something sinister linked to his time being experimented on by Haggar and that the ultimate expression of it is usually along the lines of what we got in The Black Paladins and the end of The Colony, with him serving as a brainwashed puppet who coldly does whatever Haggar commands. The fandom likes to argue that the name “Champion” was a major part of his suffering at the hands of the empire. Except… that’s not what canon tells us.

The first time the name Champion is uttered in the series, in relation to Shiro, is by captured slaves. Fellow prisoners of the empire who were there with him in the arena. The only other characters to refer to him by that moniker were Pidge, who was just as confused over the nickname as he was, and Haggar, who from her tone of voice was clearly making fun of him. It’s very telling that Shiro only had a strong negative reaction was with Haggar, and that was more of a reaction to who was saying it. When Pidge and the other prisoners use it, the worst he expresses is concern over what he might have done in order to earn it (yes, he denied that he would have hurt Matt, but that was unconnected to the name itself).

Season 1 makes it clear that “Champion” was not a moniker given to him by his captors and tormentors. It was what his fellow prisoners called him. When the captured aliens rescued in “The Rise of Voltron” refer to Shiro as Champion, they say “if anyone can get us out of here, he can.” We know Shiro didn’t escape until Ulaz rescued him, but one of his first flashbacks back in the first episode clearly shows Sentries charging at him. But that raises the question of what happen. While it is admittedly disappointing that we don’t get any verbal acknowledgement of this, something I’ve come to realize is that the writing in Voltron is a lot like a pointillistic painting: all of the details are there, but you need to take a few steps backward in order for you brain to process the work as a complete image instead of a series of colored dots.

When the prisoners aboard Sendak’s battle cruiser recognize Shiro, the grey one (also the only one with lines) says “if anyone can get us out of here, he can.” There is no trace of doubt in his voice. He speaks with certainty that the Champion is here to free them, and not only that, that he will succeed. That pretty much tells us what Shiro did to earn his nickname. Just being a tough gladiator wouldn’t be enough to earn that kind of reverence from his fellow prisoners. If he was just a gladiator, the other prisoners were more likely to fear him instead.

But when you combine that reverence the prisoners have for him with his brief flashback of sentires charging at him, it becomes clear that while he never successfully escaped on his own until Ulaz, Shiro has pulled off multiple prison breaks before. And for the name of Champion to have that level of trust attached, each one of those prison breaks would have had to have been successful. The fact that he was Haggar’s pet project was probably be the only thing that would’ve saved Shiro from execution each time. And with the fact that the name itself didn’t prompt any flashes of memory the way Allura saying Zarkon’s name did earlier in the pilot episode, I don’t think Shiro was aware of the moniker his fellow prisoners had given him until that day.

Fans latched on to the fact that Haggar was aware of the nickname and took it as a hint towards what her ultimate plans for him had been. But while fanon interpretations of his Champion persona regard him as a cold, brainwashed killing machine, every use of the name in canon by someone not part of the empire carries an undertone of reverence. The Champion was a beacon of hope to his fellow prisoners. Someone who, when all the details we get in Season 1 are taken together, staged several successful breakouts from _Central Command_ that allowed his fellow prisoners to escape the clutches of the Galra Empire.

Guys, Shiro was basically a proto-Spartacus in space.

So, when the moniker is alluded to in Clear Day, it’s a reminder that as much as we all want to see him fly the Black Lion again, there is more to Shiro than being the Black Paladin. He isn’t just the Captain of the Atlas. He isn’t just an ex-Paladin, or a former Garrison pilot, or a diplomat. He’s the man who spent an entire year held prisoner and tortured by a hostile regime, but used the small modicum of status and privilege (if being Haggar’s lab rat could even be called such, but as I said before, it would have kept his head off the chopping block) his captors had unintentionally given him to help his other prisoners escape to freedom at the cost of his own. And even after all these years that heroism is still remembered. 

I have plenty of issues with the way the season we got in December treated Shiro, but the reminder of the Champion nickname is not one of them. It’s a reminder that you can take away the Black Lion. You could even take away the Atlas. But Takashi Shirogane always has been and always will be a hero.


End file.
